H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival Report

I meant to get this done sooner, but what can you do when you have five active movie projects and an addiction to prime time TV to take up your time? Anyway, here’s my somewhat belated recap of this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon…

I had a great time at this annual festival that honors the master of weird horror. Those who have not read Lovecraft (for shame!) may not be aware of the cult following his work commands. He wrote primarilly short stories, which were published in magazines like Weird Tales back in the 20s and 30s. Since then, his writings have been adapted to the big screen from time to time with various degrees of success.

The HPLFF celebrates adaptations of any form, especially current independent works — which benefit from the fact that Lovecraft’s works are generally considered to be in the public domain.

The festival is run by Andrew Migliore, who did a fantastic job. Filmmakers, special guests, and attendees were welcomed and entertained. His mock-newspaper festival program was a riot. He and Sarah Mason, along with an army of volunteers, really put on a great show in a great venue, the historic Hollywood Theatre.

Horror author Ramsey Campbell was invited to speak on several occasions. The crowd loved him.

Why did I even go? Well, I first became aware of the festival a few years ago. I had read some Lovecraft, but since then I’ve read most of his short stories. (His few novels are pretty much all I have left.) HPL’s writing is infectious. Much of it follows a formula, but it gets under your skin. I’m also fascinated by the way he wove together his stories with a backstory of names, places, and references to ancient gods. When I go back and re-read certain stories, I understand them differently because of the stories I’ve read in the meantime. Stephen King has remarked on this, but also emulated it with his cross-pollinating stories about Castle Rock, Derry, and the Dark Tower.

In any case, I’ve since worked on scripts that contain Lovecraftian ideas, and I now have a Lovecraft adaptation of my own to promote. The Other Gods made its premiere at this year’s festival.

What surprised me was the level of quality with most of the shorts playing at the festival. There were enough for four blocks of shorts — the number of submissions has been accelerating in recent years. These indie projects are the reason Unfilmable.com webmaster Craig Mullins comes back every year. I remarked that it must be like Christmas for him, and he didn’t deny it.

It was great meeting Craig and his uncle, Rick, since we’ve corresponded so much online in the past. He had (too many?) nice things to say about The Other Gods before he’d even seen it. I started to feel as if he was building it up too much, but he didn’t run out of the theater when it played, so I guess it went over well enough.

Between the vendors’ area and the three screening rooms, I met quite a few filmmakers, artists, and musicians. I now have a stack of DVDs and books to get through — hopefully I’ll be done by next year’s fest.

Here’s a brief run-down of my favorite people and films:

Barbara Crampton
The star of many Stuart Gordon films was there for a screening of From Beyond (projected from DVD, unfortunately). About half the audience had never seen the film before (!) and had plenty of fun questions to ask. Barbara was relaxed and jovial, keeping the crowd laughing.

Dark Waters
An atmospheric, sensual feature that takes place in an isolated convent with deep dark secrets. It doesn’t always adhere to logic, but like some of Dario Argento’s best work, it works on a nightmare level. Director Mariano Baino was on hand to tell us how difficult it is to get a Russian crew to come back from four hour lunches. Check out a DVD review from Dread Central here.

Dead Birds
This feature should have received a theatrical release, but was instead shoved directly to DVD a couple years ago. Director Alex Turner was on hand to “defend” the movie, as he’s used to doing, only to discover that the audience loved it and he shouldn’t be so defensive after all. It’s a haunted house story set during the Civil War (what a concept!) and it goes the slow and steady route for awhile, building the dread as it goes. But when the scares kick in, it really goes for the jugular. Visit Alex on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/deadbirdsmovie

The Unquiet Void
Musician Jason Wallach creates soundscapes, with track names like “Breathing Liquid Breath,” “R’lyeh Rerisen,” and “God Told Me To.” He’s got material galore, and I encourage filmmakers to contact him regarding film scoring.

Guerilla Productions
Ed Martin is the long-haired, wild-eyed director of the last year’s incredibly ambitious Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. The current project for his Portland-based group is Flesh of My Flesh, which chronicles mankind’s final hours in the last great war for existence. A zombie epic that I’ll be watching for.

Unbirthen’d
Jeff Boerst, Jake Bliss, and a cast of ghoulish actresses were on hand to promote their work in progress, a feature with the odd title of Unbirthen’d. I applaud them for using old school monster effects, which they had on display for average folks like us to touch.

Strange Aeons
Eric Morgret’s movie is an adaptation of The Thing on the Doorstep, produced by Maelstrom Productions. It wasn’t playing at this year’s fest, but I was pleased to meet him after being on his MySpace “friend’s list” for many months now.

Die Musik Des Erich Zann
There were three adaptations of “The Music of Eric Zann” and this was my favorite. A short, puppet-animated piece told without words. Being German, that last characteristic lets it play across borders, but also gives an eerie quality. The characters come across through their acting and expression, which shows just how good the animation was.

Asleep in the Deep
Paul Von Stoetzel is a rock-n-roll ball-of-fire who took a punk approach to The Music of Eric Zann, which earned him a Brown Jenkins award. I found it interesting, while some found the melodrama laughable. Why are the less open-minded always the ones who sit directly behind me?

Binding Silence
Ray Zablocki also earned a Brownie, his for a freaky short about a demonic book. We the audience watch as a young man in a bookstore becomes more and more possessed with reading said book, and the more he reads, the madder he becomes. I got the chance to talk movies and website design with Ray, and I’m happy to say I loved his film.

From Beyond (Red Hatchet Films)
Michael Granberry had three animated shorts playing, but this is the one that won him a Brownie, and rightly so. A man is alone in a room with a television and a strange piece of equipment — the resonator. On the television is a scientist who tells us (in a wonderfully deep and scratchy voice) what horrors await us when the resonator is turned on. This stop-motion film physically affected me. It was seriously scary.

Dunwich
It was hard to miss Christian Matzke’s smiling face, as he and his strange woodcuts were part of the slideshow that played before each screening. He and co-director Sarah Tarling were there with the latest in an increasing line of Lovecraft films. Dunwich is not an adaptation, rather a sort of tangent that fits within the context of Lovecraft’s story of bad twins and a dysfunctional family. Dunwich’s Wizard Whateley put me on edge, but didn’t scare me half as much as when Chris snuck up on me in the airport the next day. Who knew we’d be flying home on the same red-eye flight?

Cthulhu Pet
Aaron Duran was nervous enough to take attention away from my own fidgety self during the fourth shorts block. (I sat behind him and tried not to sweat as The Other Gods was playing a few minutes later.) He needn’t have worried. His mock commercial was pretty darn funny, and of course the audience liked it quite a bit.

Call of Tutu
Director Aaron Vanek‘s latest is a surreal conversation with an old man about his cat, Tutu. Or is it? This entertaining short looks to be shot on Super 8, with a twist that reminds me of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (and Call of Cthulhu, come to think of it). See Aaron’s recap of the festival at Unfilmable.com.

I spoke briefly with Frank H. Woodward, a filmmaker from L.A. who is currently working on a documentary about Lovecraft. He was there talking with other filmmakers, no doubt grabbing a couple interviews.

Bizarro Fiction from Eraserhead Press
This coalition of writers were hawking their publications, which have strange titles and even creepier covers. “Extinction Journals” by Jeremy Robert Johnson is the one that hooked me. How can you resist a story that begins “The cockroaches took several hours to eat the president”?

I would also like to plug Rick Mullins’ series of sci-fi novels, available online at DracoMoon.com. The man knows his science facts, and he’s got some interesting ideas about parallel dimensions. Now if only he would get to work on some books on remote viewing…

Seminars I attended included a panel discussion about the challenges of adaptating fiction to the screen, a look at upcoming books from Dark Horse Comics, and a preview of the Hellboy animated movies with co-director Tad Stones.

The sense of community was tremendous. Between the Sunday brunch (which ended in some good old-fashioned storytelling) and the Secret Screening, I could tell these folks loved getting together year after year, and it was fun to join in. Oh, and that secret screening? An audience participation event with screenings of the so-bad-they’re-good “Unleash the Beast” and “Dreams in the Witch House.” Plus the blasphemously funny “Hail Mary, Kill! Kill!”

Overall, a great fest, and I look forward to returning for future installments. Before I sign off, I’d like to encourage Lovecraft devotees to submit their trailers and films to the YouTube group I moderate, “Lovecraft Lives!” Check it out at http://youtube.com/group/lovecraft